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Discover how the best media brands and solo operators are winning at newsletter growth & monetization.
Hosted by SparkLoop's cofounder Louis Nicholls and SparkLoop's newsletter nerd, Dylan Redekop—we take you behind the scenes and share the strategies, trends, and tactics you need to know to build your email audience and revenue.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the smartest media experts and operators out there today. Including from the Hustle, Morning Brew, Workweek, The Pour Over, and more.
017 - Justin Moore
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Louis Nicholls: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Send and Grow podcast. I'm your host, Louie Nichols. In my day job at Spark Loop, I spend all my time helping the best newsletter operators and media brands in the world to grow their audiences. So I get to see firsthand what growth tactics, strategies, and channels actually work, which ones you should copy, and what mistakes you should avoid.
And now with this podcast, you get that access to. Every week I sit down with a different guest from industry experts to successful operators, and we go deep on the stuff that you need to know so you can become really effective at growing and monetizing your email audience. Today I'm joined on the podcast by Justin.
Justin runs the Creator Wizard Newsletter where he's the expert's expert on how to earn more from brand deals as a creator.
Justin, thanks so much for joining us today. Let's [00:01:00] give people an idea of, The Creator Wizard newsletter, like who is it for? Why are they reading?
Justin Moore: The Creator Wizard newsletter is for creators who are looking to learn how to work with brands, work with partners, and how to charge their worth.
I think one of the, the biggest challenges that I have found with creators of all shapes and sizes, different platforms is that it's, it's very difficult to ascertain your value when you are engaging with partners and companies and you know, especially like the first like experience that most creators have, regardless of whether you're on social platforms or if you have a podcast or newsletter, whatever, it's almost always an inbound inquiry.
It's like some brand or some SaaS platform or some food brand or whatever type of creator you are. They're saying, Hey, how much to like post about us, basically? Right? How much to integrate us into your content, and at least in my experience, most creators, they are not. Either have never had experience doing that or figuring out how much to charge for something like that.
And, and in addition to that, [00:02:00] it's almost never them reaching out to the brand. Right? Sometimes it is, but most of the time it's not like, oh, I'm gonna go out and re try and pitch these like 10 brands. It's more like, I'm just gonna make this content better. I'm gonna make my newsletters better. It's like the craft comes before the business most of the time I've found.
Right. And so the reason why I decided to start the Creator Wizard newsletter is to not only educate folks around how to do this, how to interact with sponsors. And so there's a lot of mindset topics related to. Pitching brands and negotiating and all that stuff. But also like, I actually share paid sponsorship opportunities in the emails as well, because that was the other frustration is that there's all these disparate sources where whether it's a platform, you know, where you can, like, it connects brands and creators or it's like, you know, there's, there's so many different way like sources and it's very overwhelming I have found as creators.
And so that was what I sought to do, was to curate opportunities that I, you know, have sourced through kind of just being in this industry for over a decade and just kind of adding those into the newsletter. So, so it's become this it didn't start as that I, I'll say, but it, it very much has morphed into this very comprehensive [00:03:00] newsletter, targeted at help helping creators get paid sponsorships.
I love that. And
we're
Louis Nicholls: gonna talk a bit more about the, the sponsorship side, hopefully in a couple of minutes. But to begin with, what I wanna focus on, I guess the journey of how the Creator Wizard news that I got to where it is today. So maybe we should start at the end, maybe we can talk quickly about, you know, how many subscribers you have at the moment, if you can share maybe revenue numbers or anything like that.
Just give us a sense of the. The size, the format, how often is this going out, weekly, that kind of thing. And then let's go back to the beginning and talk about how it got from where it was to
Justin Moore: to where it's today. Okay. So I actually did break 11,000 creators on my newsletter like last week. And then I did as any good newsletter operator should do.
And I pruned almost a thousand cold subs off of my list. And it made me shed a tear, but I did it. So now I'm at about 10,500 creators roughly, and it's experienced. Really pretty significant growth because on, I looked in January 1st, 2022, I had [00:04:00] 1800 people on the list. So it's almost five x or over five x in less than a year.
So yeah, it looked really significant, at least for me. Significant. I know other people have like grown, grown quicker than that obviously, but, but for me at least someone who had never really. Had a newsletter. I mean, we, we dabbled, my wife and I have dabbled in that in the past, but really like having a concerted effort.
I'm gonna email every week, like saying, growing my newsletter is going to be like a major part of my business. For me, I was like pretty pleased with, with the growth and, and the trajectory and all that stuff. So the cadence is three times a week actually now, so it's. Basically the format is Mindset Mondays, so that is, as I mentioned, kind of a think piece around negotiating or pitching or pricing or something like that.
There's Take Action Thursdays, which is the sponsorship digest where I'm sharing, you know, paid sponsorship opportunities. And then Strategy Saturdays, which is an evergreen nurture sequence that is basically pulling. From the archive of my YouTube videos and podcast appearances and past Mindset Mondays that I had done in the past that I basically add to the [00:05:00] end of the nurture sequence.
And so, yeah, so if a new person who is joining my list today will, will hear from me three times a week. Amazing. Awesome.
Louis Nicholls: And when it comes to the revenue side of things, how are you monetizing the newsletter? Can you a rough breakdown of those revenue streams, what that looks like?
Justin Moore: Sure. So my main monetization mechanism is on the backend with courses and coaching.
So I am a sponsorship coach and so my offer ladder looks a as follows. So my intro, at least in its current state, it might change by the time you hear this. I don't know. I, I like changing thing all the, all the time lately, but my, my intro offer essentially, An on-demand course called Gifted to paid, and that helps creators who are at the outset of their creator journey.
Maybe you're a newsletter operator who's just kind of starting out and maybe you do get an increase saying, Hey, we'll give you free access to our SaaS tool for a year. If you talk about us in your newsletter for that, that's a form that it could take. Right? And the course is all around how do you transition those free product or free services conversations.
Paid compensation basically. Right? And so it's an on-demand course. It's $500 at least right now. And so that's offer one. [00:06:00] Number one. The next up on the ladder is my one-on-one coaching, which is a thousand dollars an hour. So this is where. Someone basically hires me for an hour on Zoom to talk about either a negotiation that they're currently working on that they need help with.
Like, okay, this brand came to me. They're asking for me all these packages, pricing, all this stuff, and I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And so that's, that's the next offer. And then up from there is my cohort course, which is brand deal wizard, and that's a four week program that I teach live three times a year.
And then the backend, which is relatively new, is I have an ongoing. Asynchronous coaching membership now essentially where alumni of my courses or past one-on-one coaching clients can hire our me and not just me now also other coaches on my team to help them with their ongoing negotiations and things like that.
So, so that's essentially the offer ladder. And so my newsletter drive is like, I look at my newsletter as kind of the primary engine of monetization for, for all of these other offers that I eventually pitched down. Amazing.
Louis Nicholls: Can you share lifetime value per subscriber or revenue per
Justin Moore: subscriber? Oh my God.
Why do you Couldn't you have told me this ahead of time? I don't have the number in [00:07:00] front of me. I don't really know. I candidly, I suck at this. Like I, I know my r p s, like I can look and convert Kit right now and I could tell you what it is. I know that's not my LTV, but like currently, let me refresh this.
Currently it's sitting at about $31 r ps, which. Okay. I mean it's not terrible, but it's like it's been hot. It's funny because like I have these injections of capital, so like that r p s will grow, go up like significantly in like a month when my enrollment for my course opens, obviously. So it's like, it's kind of lumpy in that regard.
One of the reasons why it's been challenging for me to dial in LTV is I, I didn't have a backend offer for a long time, and so now that I do, I think that number is gonna change a lot. So, I don't know, maybe get back to me on that.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, no, sure. I mean, the reason I ask is because I remember you sharing on Twitter that you had a, a revenue per subscriber of $31, which is is very impressive.
To put that in context cause it's something people ask me all the time, like $31 is pretty much ballpark, like low to mid end of where you would expect someone with this kind of multi-level services plus consulting plus courses offering to be right. [00:08:00] It's, it's mid to low on that scale, but that's not assuming that you are growing as quickly as you.
Because most people, they have a much more steady growth where they, you know, if they have 5,000 subscribers, they added 50 last month or a hundred. They're not adding a thousand a month like you are at the moment. So when I say 30 is like mid to low, I think your lifetime value, a subscriber must be very good, basically, right?
Are significantly higher than that. I would imagine a hundred. Dollars or more
Justin Moore: for sure. Ho hopefully. I mean, I, I would just looked at, I refreshed my convert kit dashboard right now, and I, I passed 30 days. I had 1755 subscribers in the past 30 days. So like, that's, wow. I didn't realize that, that actually the last time I looked at it was like a thousand.
So boom, you're good luck here, I guess. I don't know. So it's like, yeah, I mean, if I look at their trajectory, things are, you know, the hockey stick is looking good and everything, but it wasn't always that. I'm sure we'll get to this, but it was not always like that.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, I mean we are gonna get to that cause it's gonna be my ne my, it was gonna be my next question, but I'm gonna completely derail us because [00:09:00] probably not very useful to anyone listening, but I'm just super interested in this, these async coaching conversations, these async coaching offers that you have.
Okay. I've wanted to do something like this for ages. I've never really seen anyone doing it, and then I saw your tweet about it. I saw that is exactly what I was thinking of doing. How is that going for you? Like how are you finding the experience? How are customers finding that? Can you just maybe quickly explain a little bit more about what that actually is for someone who hasn't seen.
That
Justin Moore: live, I guess. Sure. Yeah. So it's, it's relatively recent. I think I launched it maybe like six weeks ago or maybe two months ago or something. And basically what the offer is, is the investment is a thousand dollars a month. So remember how I mentioned my one-on-one coaching is like a thousand dollars an hour.
This is a thousand dollars a month, and it's basically every Tuesday and Thursday morning for a couple of hours. You can send. Messages you can send us async video, audio recordings, screen shares, looms, you know, like audio notes, whatever. And we will essentially you know, for back and forth during that time period, answer [00:10:00] your questions.
And so this was my thesis, was that, so a couple, let, let's talk about actually what failed first, because I think that that's interesting is I tried to launch a membership. Man, like multiple times. Actually after my course I was like, okay, let's, so the first iteration of it was like, let's do a, a membership, which is a little bit more kind of like group coaching focused.
Where now that you've learned all about sponsorships, going through my course, I'm gonna help you create a diversified creator business. I'm gonna help you with your email list growth, your physical product, businesses, you know, Patreon, direct fan funding, you know, affiliate marketing, whatever. Like, I'm gonna help you build this whole thing out, which is, you know, I, I love talking about that stuff, right?
Like, I, I totally nerd out on that stuff and I basically said, okay, I have to get at least five alumni to sign up for this, Jessica, cuz it was gonna be a lot of work, like, you know, weekly sessions and like guest speakers and like all this stuff. It was gonna. A lift, right? And so I said, okay, almost like Kickstarter model, like five people gotta do it before I do it, before I actually do this.
Right? And I didn't have enough, I didn't have five people sign up. I had a coup, I had, I had one actually one out of the five. I'm, dude, I'm so transparent about this stuff. So basically to me, that was a com that was a, a signal like, okay, people [00:11:00] don't want, really want group coaching. Like there like maybe a few people, but like not really.
And so didn't launch it, refunded that. And then went back to the drawing board and I, so I got, the next time I tried to launch it, I got feedback from the alumni who were kind of at the tail end of the course being completed. And basically the, the message was like, We just need ongoing help. Like, like we're getting inbound offers, we're getting inquiries all the time, and I don't want to have a manager.
They said, I don't want to have someone taking 20% of every deal. I'm okay getting on the, on a call with a brand or doing an email thread with a brand. I just need someone to ask like, what do I say in response to. And so my thesis was that there is, there is a, a gap in the market between having no one for, to help you and having a fully fledged manager who's doing all this stuff for you and you're paying them a pretty penny.
And then in this middle here, there's like nothing in the middle that doesn't seem right. And so my, my offer is basically, I'm right in the middle there. I'm a coach in your pocket. You [00:12:00] pay us 12 K for the year or, I mean, it's actually, there's no commitment. It's like, cancel any time, right? So it's a thousand dollars a month, cancel any time.
And there's like an offer there. So you could imagine like a creator who's making, you know, six figures or even less, I mean, you know, maybe, you know, a significant amount paying 12 K to someone like our team to like be your, your, your backstop makes a lot of sense. I think cuz and, and to be fair, like the people who have ultimately ended up joining, they're, they're, they have a significant business.
Working with brands and sponsorships. So 12 K to them is nothing, basically it's not nothing. I don't wanna trivialize it. It is an investment, obviously, but, but re on the grand scheme of things. Right. The thing that's also really exciting to me about the, the format of the offer is that it does, it's not just me now, you know, I have other coaches on my team.
I could, I could see how like a handful now turns into 50 or a hundred people in this program in a, in five years or three years, or, I don't know, 12 months, whatever. I, I honestly, I, I, at this point, Interestingly, dude, one of the biggest insights of, of launching this is that [00:13:00] I, I feel like this actually might become the primary offer.
Eventually. The course becomes almost like the intro. It's like, that's like the first step. It's like you take the course, you get all the foundational knowledge, the baseline, all that stuff, and then now it's ongoing coaching and we're just gonna continue to help you. So that I've been moving towards that direction that, that perhaps.
Like that is what my business ultimate ultimately becomes. But I don't know, man. We'll see. I guess,
Louis Nicholls: yeah, I'm, I'm super bullish. I, I think it's amazing. There has been such a need for that, and I've noticed that I. Occasionally, very occasionally, I've done a little bit of like new general newsletter consulting, newsletter, growth consulting.
I get asked all the time because of SparkLoop and demo calls and stuff, and there aren't too many people who do it. So I get all these requests and I always have to say, look, I don't have time basically to do this, right? Like I can't take an hour out of my day on a weekly or a monthly schedule just to like help you.
And to be perfectly honest, like nine times outta 10, they don't need an hour of my time. They need five minutes with me to like figure out what the question. Then I sit there and watch [00:14:00] them try and get me this data and then we spend 10 minutes talking about it, or I spend 10 minutes thinking and then five minutes talking about it.
Justin Moore: That was the other big in insight, was that I was getting locked up on all these one hour long zoom calls when I would do one-on-one coaching for something that could have been done in 20 minutes. And I, and I was like, there's got this, this can't be, I, I'm not like this, this has gotta be a better way.
Right. And so the asynchronous model, I think is, and, and especially, I think the most important thing about it is bounding it. It ha there has to be guardrails. It can't just be, oh, like ping me, whatever. Cuz it's like, that's not gonna work. Right? You gotta say, you gotta say, here are the guardrails. It's these two days, these, these hours.
Like whatever. Also on the other side, you have to be very disciplined about setting the precedent two. So you can't answer on days that you said you weren't going to, because then the people aren't, won't believe you. So you have to like actually be disciplined about it too.
Louis Nicholls: Oh yeah. I, I, I know the feeling well.
Awesome. And I, I'm super excited for that as like a, a revenue model, but also it's like just a way of helping people. I think it's a really interesting one. But we're gonna see a lot more of, let's go back to the newsletter stuff though. So let's do a real [00:15:00] quick run through of like how you got. I guess the first time you considered the newsletter as a newsletter, rather than just some people on an email list somewhere inside of an E S P.
How'd you get from there to where we are today? Give us the kind of the brief rundown, and then I wanna talk about how you'd do it differently if you were to sort of go back and do it knowing what
Justin Moore: you know now. So let me, share a quick anecdote of my first experience with growing an email list many years ago, probably nine years ago now, eight or nine years ago.
So my wife and I have been on YouTube in particular since 2009, and we grew up, you know, a, a pretty significant audience on there. That was kind of our first foray into, into social media and. We once upon a time tried to launch a paid membership program way back in the day. And, and, and prior to the, to the paid membership, basically the team that we were working with, it was like a, a company that had come in to try, like partner with us, you know, was banging the drum of like, you gotta have an email list.
This is gonna be a big part of the launch and all this stuff too. And so we were like, okay, we had no idea what we were doing. Right. And so basically what we did is we made some exclusive content. [00:16:00] We said, Hey, in one of our YouTube videos, if you wanna see this thing we made, sign up for the newsletter or sign up for the email list or whatever, right?
And, and no joke, dude. We very easily. Got like 30,000 people on the list. Like it was nuts. Like it was crazy how, how easy it felt to like get that scale of people on the email list. And, you know, for, I'll, I'll save the story because the paid membership ultimately didn't work out. We never ended up, you know, sending regular emails to that list, you know, here and there we did, but it was something we basically just let ice for years, right?
And when we finally said, oh, let's actually, like, let's start sending emails again. You know that that's a good thing to do. Let's like open a convert kit account for, for my wife and all that stuff too. Took that 30 k list. Ran a re-engagement campaign. So out of the saying, Hey, haven't heard from us in a while, do you still wanna like hear from us?
Of the 30,000, 1000 opted in? And so it was this huge like reduction of like, and, and it was, and that to me, when we did that, I looked at that and I was just sh not only was I shocked, [00:17:00] I was just horrified because it was like, What if we would've continued the cadence all these years and building that and all this, so what?
What would this asset that we would've had? And so once I saw that that happened, At the outset, when I started the the Creator Wizard Newsletter, I was like, I'm not gonna make that mistake again. I am going to nurture these people. I'm, they're gonna hear from me regularly. I'm not gonna give up in the beginning.
In fact, this is actually a, I think, an interesting insight was, which is that I didn't have, you could not pay me. In any way. When I started the newsletter, I didn't have coaching. I didn't have a course, I didn't have anything. And so I knew down the line that I was going to monetize the newsletter on the backend with these other types of things.
But I very purposefully said, you know what? I'm not gonna do that right away. I'm gonna build the no like and trust factor. I'm gonna make a really, really compelling, you know, newsletter that people find value get value from. They tell their friends about it, yada y. Didn't have sponsorships, didn't have anything.
And so in the beginning I, I had hired actually someone to help me be regular about it, to [00:18:00] kind of curate the newsletter on it cuz it's, it's actually a lot of work. I wasn't, you know, I was doing once a week for a long time, so, you know, the, I was just kind of curating the, the opportunities actually, okay, I'm going on all these different paths, but I think it's, it's actually illustrative.
Initially it was not paid sponsorships, man, I was not sharing that. It was my moniker on social media was like the business of being a creator. So I had all these lead magnets. I had like a money management checklist and an influencer marketing terminology checklist and all these different things. I was doing all these videos and like growth was just like, it was, this was.
That was, I, I didn't, you didn't know I had sound effects, but that was growth. Okay. For me, it was not, it was not anything to call home about. Okay. And, and so it wasn't until I had this in this epiphany that like, wow, I'm getting all these paid sponsorship opportunities sent to my wife and I personally.
And we're not actually re responding to these because they're at a compensation threshold that we just wouldn't entertain at this point in our creator journey. But, 500 bucks, 200 bucks thousand bucks. That's like super meaningful to a lot of creators, a lot [00:19:00] of people. And so I started surfacing those in the newsletter and people just went crazy.
They were like, what is this? Are you actually sending me paid sponsorship opportunities? And so I literally took a hard pivot. I got rid of all the. Lead magnets. I said, no, I'm not sending you any stupid checklists anymore. I am just gonna send you paid sponsorship opportunities. You wanna sign up or not, basically.
Right. And, and that, that was a big inflection point for me. And so I started, it, just started curating this, it started getting higher quality. I started paying someone to help me curate it, thousands of dollars a month to like, help me with all this stuff because it was a lot of work. And so I just had the conviction.
I. That, Hey, eventually I'm going to monetize this down the line, but that time is not now. Amazing.
Louis Nicholls: So what were the growth levers like if, if you kind of visualize the subscriber growth on a, in a chart over time, like where are the inflection points and what, what were the big things that happened there to, let's say unlock faster growth or.
Slow things
Justin Moore: down. So yeah, I mean, if you looked at, like, if you looked at the kind of the, the convert kit chart or whatever, you know, and you see these, these little blips [00:20:00] along, along the total subscriber thing. I've seen a lot of people's things where it's like, there's like a cliff, right? It's like all of a sudden there's like this huge, you know, a ton of people.
That's never been my journey. I've had little blips here and there, and, and to be honest, I did not expect that. I thought it was gonna be like, oh, I'm, I was on. Smart Passive Income podcast. I'm gonna get 5,000 people to sign up, bro. Oh, I was on the, you know, this huge YouTube channel, shout out or whatever, and I get this huge inflection point.
I, I did get jumps, but it wasn't like 50% or something. It wasn't anything crazy. And so I honestly attribute my growth to just like showing up. Every week, right? Just like consistently publishing. If I said I was gonna send it on every Thursday, I sent it every Thursday at 7:00 AM Right? And so I know that that's like a very unsexy answer, but at least for me, my growth has been very like slow and steady and I just kept doing it and people kept referring me, oh, join the Creator was a newsletter.
It's really great. There's nothing really else out there like this. And so, The growth. I, I have tried a lot of different types of growth levers. I've basically said yes to every interview [00:21:00] opportunity, every podcast, every live stream. Like I, I do, I did all those things. You know, I, you know, so, but I, I, I, I do have, I can get into the tactics for sure, but I wanted to start this conversation by saying that like there is something to this whole like, regularity thing, you know, that just like continuing to show up for like years that does move the needle.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. No, no, I, I, that's something that everybody echoes. Everybody comes in and says, you know, the quality's gotta be really good and the consistency's gotta be really, And then everything else. It's important, but you can't kind of do anything without those,
Justin Moore: those two. But no one, no one wants to actually be patient.
That's the problem, is like I, I have like everyone says this, like, oh, I know conventional wisdom, yada yada, but like, really? What podcast should I go on? Or like, which like, Newsletter should I sponsor? And I'm just like, dude, you know, it's not like, trust me, it it, you have to have a long-term mindset with this stuff or else you're gonna go nuts if you're like refreshing your convert kit dashboard every single day.
Like, it, that's not the, like, like you saw, like I literally just went in and saw [00:22:00] 1700 people in the last 30 days. That's awesome. I had no idea The last time I looked at it was like a couple weeks ago. Right. So it's like, I don't know, maybe as like a, a good news lover or operator would be more like attuned to the metrics and all this stuff.
But like, I don't know. I, I, I feel like again, It has to be going into first principles. The content has to be good. The promise of the, of the new, of the, of the newsletter has to be good. People have to want to actually regularly open it and engage with the email. Like that's what it starts with, you know?
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, for sure. But at the same time, like you just said before January, 2022, a year ago from today, you had 1800 subscribers. Yep. In the last 30 days, you've added, what'd you say? 1700 and something? Basically the same amount, or almost exactly the same amount. Yeah.
Justin Moore: That's a big change. Well, I did get new teeth in my porcelain veneers, like at my first front four teeth.
So maybe people started seeing me in the content and they were like, that dude is super handsome. I'm gonna sign up for his newsletter. That's very possible.
Louis Nicholls: I mean, I, I can see that it's not a tactic I've written about at length, but I will include [00:23:00] it. I need to do
Justin Moore: a, a Twitter thread about this. Here is my one step strategy to grow your newsletter.
No, but, but honestly, sorry, I, I'm like very unserious about this stuff, but, okay. The, the, the, the real answer, dude is like, I, and I hope you pay me for this later, is like Spark Loop played a big role in, in the growth of my newsletter for sure.
Louis Nicholls: Just Justin, hang on one second. Yeah. Just need to release your your family from my basement now.
Yeah, we can continue. We, we've got that outta the way. Brilliant. Okay. Very good. Perfect.
Justin Moore: Thank you. God. Thank you. No, but for real, dude. Like, I remember, I, I, I joke with you, I give you a hard time on Twitter, but I, I remember showing up to a webinar. A Spark Loop webinar really early on, like less, I had less, I think I had like 500 people on my newsletter.
And I remember asking in like the chat, I was like, do you think Spark Loop is good for me? I had 500 subscribers and you, I, you gave me some sort of like, political answer, you know, or like very, very diplomatic answer around, well, you know, yeah, you might, you know, but you typically we recommend 5,000 as the minimum, or what, I don't remember what you said.
Something like that. Right. And I was like, I'm gonna prove [00:24:00] him wrong. I'm gonna sign up for Convert Kit Pro and get it for get it, get it included and I'm gonna Right. And so, but I, I very much was like, I feel. Referrals is gonna play a big role in my, in my newsletter because of the content, because of what I was doing.
I feel as though if I can provide something different. To people, not more. Right. That's a big mistake I think a lot of people make with their referral engine is that they try to give people just like, oh, I'm gonna give you more deals, or something like that. And, and I was like, you know what? That I don't, that's not right for me.
And so to just quickly back up the, the structure of my referral program is as follows. So I have four tiers, and this has evolved a lot too. Is that, so step one is I'm going to give you secret. Brand deal research that I do every single week. That is very, very detailed. So basically the, the, the, the point of this research.
We, we basically take you know, when you're scrolling Instagram or you're listening to a podcast or whatever, you hear ad reads, people are doing sponsorships, right? It says, oh, paid partnership with whatever. Right? [00:25:00] And so our, our idea was, okay, we're gonna reverse engineer these partnerships so clearly, This brand is working with creators.
They're paying creators to talk about them. Okay? So it's, they're a good target, right? Because they see the value in partnering with creators. So we're gonna take this post, we're gonna reverse engineer. We're gonna say, okay, who is the likely person at this brand? Who's, who's responsible for this collaboration?
We go do the research on LinkedIn. We figure out their email address. Actually, this is something we share in the research. We, we share why we believe this. Is the right, because cuz there's a lot of like subtlety that, you know, comes to like understanding the different titles at brands. The social media manager is not the person that you wanna be targeting, right?
So, so things like this under helping people understand this, giving pitching angles, here's what you could say if you reach out, right? So it's like really, really valuable stuff. And so this is another reason why I mentioned that I, I, I've been paying someone to like help me with this cuz it's like very detailed and so every single weekend.
So it, so that's the first tier is if you refer at least one other creator to the newsletter, you will unlock. Inline research. So the next email, if you unlock it, then the next Thursday email, there's like a [00:26:00] new block of this research that you unlock
Louis Nicholls: basically. I love that. So I should have break down real quick on that.
Cause it's, it has three components that I, I see cuz I, I'm so boring and I get to look at thousands of these all the time. Right. I'm just looking at referral programs and different like newsletter road stuff all day, every day for, for years now. And that has. Three of like the main hallmarks of like what works really well.
We've seen when we're looking at newsletter referral programs like that first reward, it's one referral, so it's super, super attainable. Everybody thinks they can get that. Number two, you have it in the newsletter itself, right? So you're scrolling through the email and you see. Oh, there's something here that I could unlock, right?
I, I'm missing out on something. There's that fomo, there's that ex exclusivity angle there. And then number three, it's actually something that's genuinely valuable. Not like a 5% coupon on something, or, I don't know, like a, a lead magnet that you give away for free anyway, or something like that. It's actually something that people really want.
So it's exclusive. There's urgency, there's fomo. It's [00:27:00] super easy to. And it's something that people really
Justin Moore: want. Yeah. And, and a hundred percent. And, and I'll, I'll also mention like, that was, it wasn't that way initially. I think I, it was like three that you had to do initially, and I think maybe, maybe early on you were like, reduce it to one.
And I was like, okay. Right. Because I, again, I have no idea what I'm doing, dude. Like, you know, I, I'm like just trying to figure it out. And so that, that's one lesson I would say here just about, generally about the reward program is like, what you pick initially may not be what you pick forever and that's fine.
You just kinda have to get started, right. And see what works. So, so that's the first reward here. The second one. Is you unlock, what is it? It's at five and you unlock a discount code to one of my courses. So that is a discount code, and then the tier above that is 25 referrals, and you unlock a 30 minute one-on-one with me.
And then 200 referrals now, or a hundred. I'm, I'm trying to remember if it's a hundred or 200. Sorry. I've changed it recently. To get free access to my Brandi Wizard program and I have. Quite a bit of, quite a few people unlock that already there. There's a couple unique elements I think to my audience as well [00:28:00] that makes it so that it's easy for people to referrals that my audience is influential, they are creators.
And so if someone, like I had literally one person share their. Spark loop referral code on their YouTube community tab, and they got 250 referrals in like 24 hours. Right? So it's like nuts, right? It's like it, it can be. And so, so I think also comes going back to first principles, like picking your customer segment.
Picking your audience of like who you're serving can sometimes play a role in. The velocity of your referral program too, so that that, that, that's like another conversation, but
Louis Nicholls: For sure. But it's, it's interesting there because I mean, on the one hand, like, yes, your audience is influential. They, if they want to promote something, they're very good at promoting it to the, to a lot of the right people in the right way.
Hopefully if, if you're teaching them the right stuff, right, they're very good at that, but at the same time, because they're, or partly because they're learning from you as well. They really understand the value of them sharing. So you, you've gotta give them something they really want mm-hmm. [00:29:00] And make it compelling because they understand the value of a, a tweet or a, a YouTube shout out or something like that.
So it's,
Justin Moore: that's a good, that's actually a really good point that the threshold, the BS meter threshold or the, you know, hey, you have to tip them over to be like, Hey, yeah. Like, it still is worth it for you. Even if you have, you know, a hundred thousand followers on Instagram or something, it's still worth it for you to post this on your stories or something like that.
Right. A hundred percent agree and, That was, for me, that referral program was a huge part of like my growth over the last like y you know, year for sure. However, I will say that some of the more recent product enhancements from Spark Loop has real, also really taken growth to another level, including Scribe as well as the paid, you know, the partner network.
And so, you know, obviously if you're listening to this podcast, you probably know what those are, but just like those are like paid compensated programs that, you know, allow kind of just throw gasoline on, on the fire in terms of growth. But, but again, going back to the. Knowing your numbers type thing. I, I've been quite comfortable spending a pretty significant amount of money to be participate in [00:30:00] some of these programs.
Like I think I spent $5,000 last month on partner network campaigns. Like I'm actually paying other newsletter people for, for recommending me. You know, it just makes sense on the back end, like in the way in which I monetize, I have higher ticket stuff and so I have the conviction to spend that amount of money cuz I know it's gonna, it's gonna translate.
Yeah. I
Louis Nicholls: did a, a masterclass actually yesterday on how to, to grow to a Million survivor. And I went into it and I said, look, you're really not gonna like this very much because you're gonna want me to talk about tactics and like, oh, you should do referrals, or You should do this, or you should do that. And I'm like, that's important.
But if you want to grow really, really quickly, there are really only two things that are super important on top of good content and consistency. Obviously there are only, only two things are important. Number one, how much money do you make per supplier? And how can you get that number as higher as possible?
Because the higher that is, the more you can pay, right? For subscribers. Number two, how quickly upfront can you earn that money back? Because the quicker you [00:31:00] earn it back, the more budget you have to invest in new growth, basically, right? If you earn $10,000 per subscriber, but they don't pay you for three years, you have to have a lot of money in the bank to be able to grow that newsletter.
Whereas if you make $10 per subscriber, but they pay you on day. You can write that newsletter really quickly.
Justin Moore: Well, you know, it's, it's an interesting point and I'm glad you brought it up because I, I should mention that one of the other reasons that I was able to not monetize the newsletter for the first, you know, good chunk of time was because my wife and I have.
This existing business on social media where we're making a lot of money in, in other ways. And so I was able to use that to fund this, what I always have looked at as kind of like a skunkworks project, this Creator Wizard stuff, right? And so I never, I, I, from the beginning, I was like, this is gonna make a money.
Eventually probably, but not yet. Like, I'm okay with that. If this is, I'm just kind of sinking it into this now. And I, I realize that not every newsletter operator or creator has that luxury. But what, what, what I will say is [00:32:00] that if you're in your nine to five, don't wait. To like grow the newsletter until you like quit your full-time job and like, okay, give my full effort to it.
It's like it makes much more sense to be able to like have another income to devote to or invest in this kind of ni, you know, side hustle project and, and build it up and grow it. So, and then, and then cuz that's also always a really tricky chan transition is like, how do you, how do you grow something without trying to be too salesy upfront, be like, oh, buy my coaching or buy my course or buy my whatever.
You know, so, so I understand that kind of model's, not for everyone, but definitely food for thought.
Louis Nicholls: I wanna talk about sponsorships in a second, but I want to take one quick look back at you. The newsletter now. It's growing with referrals. It's growing through word of mouth. It's growing through recommendations.
Justin Moore: Oh, and paid. Paid Facebook ads that I'm trying. Literally just turn, turn them on a couple days ago. Awesome.
Louis Nicholls: So paid Facebook ads have started.
Justin Moore: Yep. We could talk about that too, cuz I'm ex I'm excited about that even though you told me to not do that. But I will. I will. I'll let you know. To be very
Louis Nicholls: clear, I think paid Facebook ads are great.
The one caveat I have with Facebook ads. [00:33:00] You have to be a very careful at how you are funneling them in and assessing the quality. Yeah, because it's super easy to get a lot of nonsense, a lot of junk, and b, You have to be pulling the revenue forward, right. So, yes. I mean, we, we love, we would like every newsletter to do Facebook ads if possible.
Mm-hmm. Because they can pay two or $3 per subscriber, maybe even less. And then they stick our subscribe widget on the, the signup page and they recommend two other newsletters. They make $4 from that. Yep. They're growing for free. And we take 20% commission, which obviously we love a Spark
Justin Moore: lupus as well.
So I'll, I'll tell you, this is very, very small sample. Size already. Okay. But I'm getting a blended, a blended acquisition cost right now of a con conversions of like 90 cents right now. 90
Louis Nicholls: cents. Okay. Awesome. So, I mean, that's, that's good. We don't know yet how many of those are going to
Justin Moore: Yeah, we'll see, I, I mean, I, I am, I'm, I'm doing like quite a few different targeting types mm-hmm.
In, in the different assets, you know, and again, we're gonna, we'll see how it, how it nets out. But it's like, again, [00:34:00] I know if you're listening to this, you're thinking, oh, that seems so overwhelming. Like, I, I, all these different tactics and growth stuff and all this stuff. Like, I wanna be very clear, like, I didn't start dabbling with this type of stuff until like, two years into it.
Right. So, so don't feel too overwhelmed if you're like, oh God, I can't even do that. So, so, you know, it, it does take time to like develop all these different tactics, but I just wanted to mention that.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, no, I like the way you've done it where you're adding, you're layering things. Sort of one after, after the other.
You know, you do one channel really well figure out the playbook, either let it run automatically or outsource someone else to run and improve, and then go on to the the next thing right now. I think that's smart. Yeah.
Justin Moore: Yeah. You're making me sound super smart, dude. So I really appreciate that.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you came prepared with your own soundboard.
Justin Moore: I mean, I did. That is a really good point. All right. I am super smart. Yes. Thank you. Have we got one?
Louis Nicholls: I, I was waiting for a, oh, sorry.
Justin Moore: There we go. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes, my bad. That was my opening. I failed.
Louis Nicholls: No worries, no worries. We're all good. Okay, cool. So very quickly, you're looking back now, looking back at the growth of the newsletter, [00:35:00] one thing, like the major thing that you would change if you were to go and do it again.
For
Justin Moore: me in particular, it would be getting rid of lead magnet. Getting rid of lead magnets. Okay. Getting rid of lead magnets, because that was a red herring. I spent so much time trying to dial those in. This is not for everyone I understand, but it, it is for people who wear the future promise of content is the most compelling thing.
Incentivizing people to sign up, not the high sugar content ped, downloadable, not the checklist or not the whatever. Because I, I, I fundamentally felt as though the reason that I'm gonna be able to continue to provide value to these people is what I'm sending them every week. Right? And if the reason I feel like I'm going to have a much longer Relationship with these subscribers, if that's the promise I made at the outset is like, Hey, I'm not [00:36:00] gonna send you any downloadable checklist, pdf, whatever.
I'm gonna send you paid sponsorships every week. That's the expectation that I'm setting up with these people on the landing page. That's the test. I have a testimonial on there, like, I'm getting these every week. It's awesome. This type of thing. And so for me, I wish I would've had that realization, that epiphany.
Sooner. I know, I realize that's not for everyone, just structurally in terms of the content of their newsletter, but for me, that was the biggest change. Amazing.
Louis Nicholls: Interesting. Yeah, it's, it's funny you mentioned that the very, very first podcast episode we did of the podcast was with Jenny from From Morning Brew, who was head of Growth at Morning Brew at the time, and she said the same thing she said for Morning Brew, tried every kind of lead magnet you can imagine didn't work.
People didn't want a lead magnet from a daily news company. They wanted daily news. Definitely. I think there are situations where if the value is obvious and it's inherent in like the promise of the future value that will come with the newsletter, then Elite Mag is gonna be a distraction. It's gonna be the wrong thing, right?
But then of course there [00:37:00] are also people who have newsletters where they really want something specific now, and they're going to be grateful to continue to. Information, advice news in the future. Mm-hmm. But that's not really what they want to give you
Justin Moore: their email address for a hundred percent fair.
And, and you know what, you know, if I extrapolate that and, and if I have any sort of result like Morning Brew, then I'm, I'm happy with that analogy or that comparison, so thank you.
Louis Nicholls: Very good. Yeah. Let's, let's hope it, we can bring you back on it in two years and see how that's gone. I think there might not be enough creators to, to reach or may, maybe in the future, maybe creators are growing so quickly that,
Justin Moore: oh, come on.
Are you kidding me? This is, we're in the second inning of the creator economy, bro. Come on. Don't, don't put a ceiling on it like that. Let's.
Louis Nicholls: Well, the challenge has been made. Go for it. Let's
Justin Moore: see what happens. Wow. Okay. Now, the next two years is gonna be proving you wrong. You, you gave me that, like, that doubt two years ago about joining sparkly and now you're just continuing to fuel my fire.
I see. Okay. I get it. Yes. This is [00:38:00]
Louis Nicholls: our, our primary sales strategy is making Yeah. Works. Works well for us. Yeah. Awesome. So we don't have that much longer left. Something I do want to hit on is, We have people come on and talk about newsletter sponsorships specifically quite often on the podcast cuz it's a really interesting topic and it's something that that creators and newsletter Operatings really care about.
And we've had some really good experts on. Not me though. No, not yet. No. Now you yet, I mean, but yeah, I
Justin Moore: proceed.
Louis Nicholls: You are contractually obliged to stay for another 11 minutes and answer questions, so yeah, don't worry. No, but the thing is, I mean, you are the person who we've had on the podcast so far, and probably the person just in general, that I know at least, who has the most experience across a broader range of creators who are monetizing via ads and via sponsorships and, and promotions and things like that.
Mm-hmm. So I guess the, the main question that I. Jump into, and then maybe we can follow on from there is you've seen how newsletters run sponsorships. You've seen how YouTubers and Instagram influencers and TikTok and whoever knows what runs sponsorships. [00:39:00] What would you say is like the main thing that a pure newsletter operator, a pure newsletter, Creator can learn from someone who is primarily doing sponsorships on a different platform.
Justin Moore: That's a great, it's actually a really good question, and I think one of the biggest insights that you can learn from, I guess, social media creators is not looking at your open ad slots as commoditized. I. I think that that's a, that's a really tricky concept for a lot of folks to understand, especially if you're come from kind of an owned platform world, whether it's podcasts or newsletters or whatever.
It's like, hey, visit, you know, creator.com/you know, sponsor, and you can just literally book a slot. You give 200 bucks, right? Fine. You. You know, book a slot on my newsletter for this date or whatever. And while that does have a, a convenience factor, right, where you don't have to like, you know, you [00:40:00] get your ad slots filled and everyone's hunky dory, you are leaving a massive amount of money on the table with that approach.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, cuz I, I, my, this isn't working in my brain, something. So, but that's an ad slot. So that's $200 there, 500 for mid-roll. A hundred at the top, 200 at the bottom. Okay. Ex explain. The better way
Justin Moore: of doing this. So the better way of doing it is to ask the brand what their goals are. Okay? How do you know whether this company won't pay you 50 K to be your title sponsor for the for the next quarter?
And you don't have to worry about working with anyone else. You have a call, you get on a Zoom call with them and they say, you know what? We have identified that you are a huge. Voice in this niche amongst software programmers who do X, Y, Z, whatever your niche newsletter is, right? We are a SaaS tool that you're like, your audience is like exactly who we're trying to talk to.
[00:41:00] And you say, Hey, what's your goal? And they say, you know what? Brand awareness like that. We're trying to get our name out there. We're launching a new feature. We're launching a new X, Y, Z, whatever. This is like a really important initiative for us. That's what they tell you. And you say, oh, well, great news.
I have a title sponsor slot open for 50 K. Like, do you want it? Versus if you never had that conversation, if you never gave them an opening to have a call with you or to even act interested in the outcome of this partnership, then you would've never had that information. I do wanna real quickly talk, this is like a very, very important concept, which is, When you ask a brand what their goal is, what, what success would look like for a partnership, they're, they're literally a hundred percent of the time gonna tell you one of three things.
Okay? The first one is, hey, they're gonna say, Hey, this is, A conversion focus campaign. We're trying to drive a measurable action. Downloads on our app, clicks on this link, you know, trials of our software, like whatever. It's something measurable, right? The second type of [00:42:00] campaign goal type is a repurposing campaign, meaning that the reason that they wanna partner with you is so that you can generate.
Content for them that they can reutilize in other ways. Guests put it on their blog, use it for paid advertising, run it on, you know, as a paid out on Facebook or Instagram, like what, whatever it is, right? They're, they, they, they, they love your content and they want to use your name and likeness. To generate content that they can utilize.
Okay. And the last goal type is like we just mentioned, brand awareness. They just wanna get the name out there. They're launching, they're huge in UK and now they're launching in North America and they wanna, you know, make a big splash. Right. That, that's the type of campaign. And the reason it's so important that you get this information from the brand is that you're pricing has to change.
You cannot be charging them the same amount for each of these different goals. Because the reason, let me explain why is that for a conversion campaign, that person that you're interacting with, their boss is breathing down their neck saying, you cannot pay Justin more than a thousand dollars for this partnership.
If you know, let's say, yes, [00:43:00] 10,000 people on his newsletter, we're guessing there's 5% of those people are gonna click the link of the 5%. This many people are gonna try sign up for the trial sign up, and our acquisition metric, our cpa. Per trial, you know, that'll eventually turn into a paid thing is X, Y, Z, right?
It's simple, it's math. We cannot pay Justin more than that, right? And so creators oftentimes get very frustrated with these types of campaigns because they're trying to negotiate and the brand's like, sorry, like we can't pay you anymore than this because this is the N, this is the napkin math, and we can't, we cannot budge, right?
Contrast that with a brand awareness campaign where they're saying, oh, we, you know what? We're not looking at conversions. We're looking at just. Being advocates, grassroots support of this community. And so your leverage to negotiate is so much higher than it is in the conversion. And then also going back to this kind of repurposing example, is your ability to drive results for them or drive opens on your, or clicks or whatever is completely irrelevant.
They don't care how many people are on your newsletter. They don't care how many followers you have [00:44:00] because the reason that they wanna partner with you is because you're an established figure in your in. And they want to tap into your expertise. Great. Make some great content and use it in these other ways, right?
And so again, you, but also, by the way, what's really interesting is that your pitches should change. Now, if they say, oh, repurposing is our goal, you say, oh, you know what? Now that you told me that actually, like doing newsletter blasts in my newsletter, I don't think is actually the best utilization of your budget, I actually think I should do some webinars with you.
I should do some UN unique guest posts on your blog. I should do X, Y, Z. Oh, by the way, it's gonna be 10 grand because you told me what you're trying to accomplish and these other things that I'm proposing to you are actually gonna move the needle. More effectively. So, so I, I know that this is like maybe blowing some people's minds right now, but like I have this saying like, you're not just a creator, you are a consultant.
You have to listen to what the brands are telling you and propose something that is a direct response, and that is how you're gonna unlock these really large budgets.
Louis Nicholls: I love that. I, I really love that. So in that situation, in that case, then you shouldn't have [00:45:00] prices publicly. It shouldn't, you shouldn't be able to see what the price is.
Justin Moore: Delete your pricing page from your media kit immediately. That's what I, that's what I always say. You should not have a pricing page on a website or you allow people to use Stripe and book stuff. No, it's always let's go on a call. And you know what, if you are someone who is just like, you know what, I don't have time for that.
Like, I'm, I'm trying to get my newsletter out every week. It's a big lift. I'm doing all this stuff. Like I don't have time to have all these conversations with brands. If I told you that you could be making five to 10 x the. If you did this, would you change your mind? Because I bet you would, and this is not an understatement.
Okay. Because the other, the other really important concept to understand is that, When you reach out and try and pitch a brand like, oh, sponsor my newsletter. I've got all your ideal customers in my audience, like, blah, blah, blah, delete. They don't know you. They don't care about your content. They don't, they literally have never heard of you in their life.
Delete, okay? The the fundamental shift that you have to have when you're reaching out is, Hey, brand. I did a little bit of research into the campaigns you're running, the [00:46:00] stuff you're posting on your press releases. It seems like you're trying to target this type of customer segment. I believe that I can help you accomplish that by sponsoring my.
It's cause and effect. It's a comp, it's basically the same like, you know, deliverables, but it's a complete reframing of how you're actually providing value to them. And guess, guess what? They have budgets to solve their own problems. They don't have budgets to pay random people who reach out.
Louis Nicholls: I love that.
I love that. I, it's not what I was expecting, but it makes a lot of sense. I. I dunno if everyone's gonna love it. I dunno if everyone's gonna take it on. Look, but I would,
Justin Moore: I hope people do. I understand this is not for everyone and that's okay. What, what my coaching, what my content, the whole, the whole purpose of it is to, to help you understand that there is a different path.
There is you, you, you are, if you are someone who is comfortable. Or is willing to learn and invest in your education and understand how to have these conversations, how to get smarter about, especially if sponsorships is a major part of your revenue. You look at any [00:47:00] research out there for a lot of creators.
Also, newsletter authors, sponsorships tends to be the one of the largest buckets. Yeah, right of, of the way in which people derive income. So you better invest in your education, get smarter about how to negotiate, get smarter about how to have these conversations and help brands win. Like, in my opinion, like it makes a lot of sense.
But yes, I understand it's not for everyone and that's okay. Like I, you know, different
Louis Nicholls: strokes. Oh, I love it. And I think there's, there's, there's no harm to trying and get once or twice, right? There's literally no downside to, to give.
Justin Moore: Yeah. You can always go back to the other model. You shouldn't, but you can always go back to the other model.
You
Louis Nicholls: can, you shouldn't, but you can. Okay, awesome. So Justin, where can people go and find out more about this kind of stuff, these kind of tips? Where can they, they find you online and. And join up
Justin Moore: and, and hear. All right. Well, as any good newsletter operator, you gotta go to the newsletter. It's creator wizard.com/join.
It's completely free. And also I will do a shameless plug, which is that I recently launched a brand new podcast, which I think each and every one of you who is listening will actually probably really enjoy. It's called Creator [00:48:00] Debates and every. Is basically pits two high profile creators against each other to debate a hotly contested topic in the creator economy.
So you've got video versus non-video podcasts, or you've got hustle culture versus life design, or you've got Twitter versus Instagram for business growth. So it's gonna be. A lot of fun. There's countdown timers, there's fricking buzzers if you go over your time. So it's gonna, it's gonna be really fun. I didn't wanna make a Talking Head podcast like, no offense, obviously this was, this was a lot of fun, but I wanted something kind of irreverent and stupid and silly and, and fun and so yeah, you can just go, just search at creator debates on YouTube and your favorite podcast player.
I
Louis Nicholls: know. I feel bad. I, I I don't even have a buzzer. Nevermind. I,
Justin Moore: I was not subtweeting you, I promise.
Louis Nicholls: Very good. I mean, I'm really excited for it. Genuinely. I mean, the, the one I'm most excited for, I hope I'm allowed to share, is the paid versus the free newsletter one. I know you have two amazing people coming.
Justin Moore: Oh, I've got some heavy hitters on that one. Yeah, it's, it's, it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm excited for that [00:49:00] conversation.
Louis Nicholls: Awesome. Well, I'm gonna put those links in the, in the show notes of course, so people can go and find them. Justin, thank you so much. Taking the time out to talk about this stuff.
Absolutely.
Justin Moore: Thanks for having me, dude. Thanks for
Louis Nicholls: listening to this episode of the Send and Grow podcast. If you liked what you heard, here are three quick ways that you can show your support. Number one, leave us a five star rating or review in the podcast app of your choice, number two, email or d m e with some feedback with your questions.
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